Introduction

We provide nearly weekly updates to the various component categories in our Price Guides, and the information contained within those articles should be enough to tide you over until we update our full Buyer's Guide. We (that is, really I, Jarred) have not updated our Buyer's Guides as frequently as some would like, so we're going to make a better attempt at keeping things updated on a monthly basis. In order to facilitate that goal, some of the discussion about why certain parts are better than others will be omitted, as you can read more about our latest CPU, graphics card, storage (HDD/DVDR), and motherboard recommendations elsewhere.

We do our best to consider all the options, but the simple truth is that without spending numerous pages on each Buyer's Guide, we can't explain every facet about each pick. There are always alternatives to the choices that we make, and you can substitute parts as you see fit. If you don't like our motherboard, or you want a slightly faster (or slower) CPU, GPU, etc., then you can make that change. The overall goal of the System Buyer's Guides is to provide a complete recommendation for every component needed to build a new computer. Some parts are very personal selections, and we won't dwell too long on those choices. If you have a set of speakers or a display that you prefer over our pick, by all means, go with what you like. However, if you're overwhelmed by the number of decisions that need to be made, picking up the exact choices listed in our Guides should give you a reliable computer that anyone would be happy to own.

We're covering the Mid-Range Guide in this article, which is really our favorite sector. The Budget Guides force us to make many compromises that we really aren't happy with. A $500 to $750 computer will be good, but it's not something most enthusiasts would really want. The High End is the other extreme: sure, we lust after those parts, but the truth is that we don't really feel that most people should be spending upwards of $2000 on a computer (unless money isn't a concern at all). The Mid-Range sector is where we get the best overall build, combining quality and performance for a reasonable price.

$1250 is the rough goal, but we'll be going as much as $250 over or under that mark. If $250 extra is too much money, then honestly, it might be better to consider whether or not you really need to spend even $1000 on a computer. $750 computers will do everything that you need them to do, meaning everything but serious gaming or professional work. For professional work, $250 should be a negligible one-time (or once every two years) expense. Gaming, on the other hand, is not even remotely a necessity. It's a hobby, and it's an expensive hobby at that. $250 is the cost of four or five retail games, and most gamers will spend far more than that over the course of the year. If you're able to afford gaming as a hobby, it's not unreasonable to assume that you can spend a few extra hundred on a purchase, provided that the performance warrants the additional expenditure. We should also mention that our prices are current as of the time of writing; in this case, September 7th - check the RealTime Pricing Engine for the latest information.

Our recommendations for the Mid-Range Guide this month are going to be focused around showing the flexibility that a $1500 budget gets you. To that end, we'll be looking at two builds (Intel and AMD) targeted at the gaming enthusiast, and we'll have two other builds (again, Intel and AMD) that look more towards the office/professional market. (We could call it the "SOHO" market, but that's an overused buzz term that we'd just as soon avoid.) Remember, we're buying a complete system with keyboard, mouse, display, speakers, etc. Periodic upgraders can hopefully avoid buying a new display and speakers at the very least. Once you remove those from the equation, we're looking at spending just over $1000 for a computer upgrade. If you sell off your old system to a friend or family member and recoup some of the cost, it's entirely possible to stay close to the cutting edge of technology with an initial investment of $1500 followed by $250 to $500 for upgrading each year.



Gaming CPU and Motherboard Recommendations

While we are providing two Gaming system recommendations here, let's make this perfectly clear: the AMD setup will beat the pants off of the Intel setup in gaming. It's not even close, and what's more, the Intel system will cost a bit more. The future Intel processors (there's additional information here) have a lot to offer and should provide substantially improved gaming performance relative to today's Prescott parts, but the "future" is almost a year away. Some will argue that Intel is "more reliable", but that simply isn't our experience. Reliability seldom has much to do with the processor these days; the choice of RAM and motherboard is of far more consequence. There may be some specific applications that would have problems on one type of processor, but if there are, we have to admit that we haven't encountered them.

With that disclaimer out of the way, our Gaming Systems are going to make a massive trade-off in CPU performance in order to get a better GPU. Gamers are very much limited by the graphics card in the latest games - provided that you want to run at high resolutions with 4xAA/8xAF enabled at all times. HDR rendering in a few recent titles has also had a massive impact on performance, though the quality of HDR is not yet at the point where we would say that it's worth losing over half of your frame rate. As we're building systems that will have some upgrade potential in the future, we're also going to go with higher quality motherboards that have SLI. (ATI's Crossfire boards are still not available, so we'll remain with NVIDIA chipsets and graphics cards on the gaming setups.)

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AMD Gaming Motherboard: DFI LanParty UT SLI-DR
Price: $165 shipped
AMD Gaming CPU: Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 512K 1.80GHz
Price: $146 shipped (Retail)
Total: $311

We've selected one of the best SLI motherboards (some would argue the best) for the foundation of our system. True, you can find plenty of cheaper SLI boards out there, but we don't feel that the quality is worth the $50 that you might save. DFI's LanParty series comes loaded with extras - you might even say that there's too much stuff. The DFI board received our Gold Editor's Choice award in our initial SLI roundup, and we still haven't seen any boards that are better. You can get either the SLI-D or the SLI-DR, with the main difference being the presence of eight SATA connectors on the SLI-DR. However, right now, the SLI-DR is actually slightly cheaper than the SLI-D, so there's no reason to opt for the latter. Whether or not you make full use of every feature, the end result is a high performance motherboard with great features, an attractive design, and plenty of support for the overclockers of the world. That brings us to the CPU.

The Venice cores are really wonderful chips, all told. 1.80GHz doesn't sound like much, and if you stick with stock speeds, you will be CPU limited in many games. However, CPU limited at 50+ FPS really isn't too bad. With the motherboard and CPU that we've selected, though, you should be able to reach much higher speeds than 1.80GHz. 2.40GHz (267MHz CPU bus with the stock 9X CPU multiplier) is about as sure of an overclock as anything that we've seen. Even with the stock retail HSF, 2.40GHz is common. All you need is a good understanding of how to overclock and a motherboard with good overclocking features. Good quality RAM is also helpful, and we'll get to that in a moment. That's a 33% overclock, and performance should be about 25% faster in most benchmarks, give or take. What you're basically getting is a 3800+ for half the cost, and we'll use the savings to upgrade the graphics card. (With a bit of effort, you can probably even reach higher overclocks than 2.40GHz, but those are less of a "sure thing".)

If you want other options for the motherboard, we have quite a few that we're tracking in our Price Engine. The $98 Biostar is so cheap that it's almost too tempting to pass up. We seriously doubt that it will have equal overclocking performance and stability compared to the DFI, but you could take the extra $70 and upgrade to a faster processor, alleviating the need for overclocking to a large degree. We mentioned BIOS support of the latest CPUs as a problem with MSI boards in our last Guide, and thankfully, that has now been fixed. However, we're a little gun-shy now, as nearly two months to provide a working BIOS implementation is not acceptable. ASUS and EPoX are other alternatives to the DFI that we've listed, and they're usually pretty safe.

We mentioned processor upgrades, and here's our complete socket 939 list. Those who dislike overclocking might want to look towards the Venice 3500+ and San Diego 3700+ parts, though obviously they cost quite a bit more. In the case of the 3500+, you're spending 50% more on the processor for about 20% more processor performance. Athlon X2 is also an option, but it isn't going to help your gaming performance at all, unless you like to leave many other applications running in the background while you play games. With the cheapest X2 coming in at $361 at the time of writing, we simply can't justify it for a "Mid-Range Gaming" configuration. We're already pushing the limits of "Mid-Range", and an extra $200 just on the CPU is too much. The Venice 3200+ might be worth getting, however, as it's only $29 more.

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Intel Gaming Motherboard: ASUS P5ND2-SLI Deluxe
Price: $199 shipped
Intel Gaming CPU: Pentium 630 2MB Prescott-2M 3.0GHz
Price: $180 shipped (Retail)
Total: $364

Our motherboard pick is the best Intel SLI motherboard that we've seen, but it costs a lot. We compared it very favorably to 955X in our Dual Core Intel Platform Shootout, and prices are thankfully not quite as extreme anymore. At $199, it's still more than the AMD recommendation, but ASUS boards - and particularly their Intel platform boards - have always been among the best. Quality costs money, and there's also a premium being charged for the ASUS name. We would love to go with one of the more economical choices, but we're simply not comfortable doing so right now. $50 in order to save potentially days (or weeks) of headaches is money well spent in our book.

Our CPU choice gets a change this month: the Pentium 6xx parts. No, the parts aren't new, but the prices are! When they first launched, our impression wasn't especially favorable. The parts weren't bad, but performance wasn't stellar when compared to the 5xx parts. Doubling the L2 cache, enabling EM64T, but then having higher cache latencies meant that Prescott-2M was merely "okay". A step sideways rather than forward was how we initially described it. While there are select applications where the 5xx parts are actually faster than the new parts, gaming and many business applications at least benefit. In the past, we still had a price disparity to worry about, but that has now disappeared (and this only recently). With the 6xx and 5xx parts now costing nearly the same for the same clock speed, we'll take the increased cache. $180 for the 630 essentially matches the $179 of the 531, and it's only a few dollars more than the slower clocked 521.

What about the alternatives? Intel SLI motherboards are starting to become more readily available, but as with the AMD offerings, we don't want to skimp on the motherboard cost and end up with an unstable or unsupported configuration. We basically have two price points for Intel SLI: $135 to $165 or $195 and up. The choices for the lower end include MSI, Gigabyte, Abit, and Biostar. We haven't reviewed any of the boards in that group, and previous experience with several of the companies leaves us a little hesitant to recommend them. If you want to take a slight risk, the Biostar is particularly interesting, as it currently has a $25 mail-in rebate. That means that it's only $112 once you're finished providing them with a 0% loan for a couple of months. Will it work flawlessly? Will it overclock at all? We have no idea, but if anyone wants to be a $100 guinea pig, let us know how it works out!

The Intel processor alternatives are a little more limited. Without dropping to a budget Pentium chip (and losing HyperThreading and possibly EM64T), you can't get under $170 ($163 if you count the 520, but that doesn't have EM64T). Moving up the price ladder, you could go with the Pentium D, but for gaming, that's really taking a step back: the fastest Pentium D 840 is only as fast as the Pentium 540 in games, which itself is nothing special. The 640 or 650 is a better choice, and they're even cheaper than the 541 and 551 respectively. As with the AMD chips, though, you're spending about 50% more for two CPU bin upgrades; only this time, you're only getting a 13.3% clock speed increase. (400MHz means a lot more at 1.80GHz than it does at 3.0GHz.)

As we've already stated, the performance of the Intel system in gaming really isn't going to match up with the AMD system. It will also consume substantially more power, which means more heat and more noise. Overclocking is a possibility, but we're far more hesitant to make any claims about what can be achieved with the stock cooling configuration. With the ASUS motherboard and the retail HSF, 3.4 to 3.6GHz is entirely possible. (Throw in some liquid nitrogen, and you might even reach 7.2 GHz!) 3.73GHz with a 1066FSB is another possibility, although a better HSF is recommended in that case. If you're an Intel diehard, you'll probably be happy with whatever you get, and that's all that really matters.

The SLI Debate

We've recommended SLI-capable motherboards for the gaming setups. Are they really required? Not in my opinion, but the extra money invested in the motherboard may prove useful for upgrades. Another possibility is to forget about the SLI motherboards and go with a single X16 slot. By the time you're in need of a faster graphics subsystem, you'll probably be looking at socket M2 and DDR2 for AMD, or the new Broadwater chipsets plus Conroe for Intel. You might even have a G80 or ATI R6xx graphics chipsets available that can outperform SLI'ed 7800GT cards. The point is, SLI may or may not prove useful in the long run. If you want to drop the SLI support, you can save around $70 and get either of the Office System motherboard recommendations. You could also allocate the money to more RAM instead of SLI potential.



Office CPU and Motherboard Recommendations

For the non-gaming configurations (which we're loosely terming "office" here), our motherboard and processor picks are very different. While dual core at present does little to nothing for gaming other than to increase costs (or allow you to run applications in the background while gaming), the same is not true of non-gaming applications. Many professional business applications are already optimized to support SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processing - in other words, multiple CPU cores) configurations. Video encoding, image editing, 3D rendering, and software development can all take advantage of the second CPU core. At the same time, even the cheapest of modern graphics cards is more than sufficient for most non-gaming work. There's a reason why Intel currently has more installed graphics chips than anyone else: for business use, integrated graphics are perfectly adequate. Multitasking will also benefit from the addition of a second CPU core, so burning a DVD while surfing the web, running your virus scanner, etc. shound't be a problem.

Here, Intel has the clear advantage, simply in terms of pricing. While the Intel Pentium D chips are not as fast as the AMD X2 chips, we're less concerned with maximum performance than we are with having a second core. DVD burning and web browsing aren't going to max out even a single CPU core, but the context switching that the CPU has to do in order to run both tasks at the same time can have an impact (especially under Windows XP). If you're running two CPU intensive tasks, of course, dual cores will be tremendously helpful. We've labeled this setup as "Office", but it is also useful for non-business tasks, with DVD playback/ripping/encoding, PVR duties, and even moderate gaming topping the list. In short, they're good systems for homes as well as businesses.

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AMD Office Motherboard: EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra
Price: $98 shipped
AMD Office CPU: Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2x512K 2.0GHz
Price: $361 shipped (Retail)
Total: $459

If gaming isn't a primary concern, the use case for SLI is greatly diminished. Sure, you can use the second slot for a non-graphic device, but most of those will be fine in an X1 or X2 slot instead. Given the current price premium for SLI boards - especially the higher-quality boards - we're going to skip that for our business configuration. The EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra received top marks in our nForce4 Ultra Roundup, and at under $100, it's a great bargain. Paired with the lowest priced Athlon X2 part, the 3800+, we still end up spending around $150 more for the motherboard and CPU relative to our Gaming configuration, but we'll save that money elsewhere. This is a potent combination and should meet just about any business/home needs for several years. About the only additions that might be required in the next year or two are a new graphics card, more data storage, and/or more RAM. (You'll probably be upgrading the OS at some point as well.)

While we've said that Intel has the pricing advantage, we really need to qualify that statement. Yes, the X3800+ is substantially more expensive than the Pentium D 820 (and even the 830 is cheaper). The quality Intel motherboards do cost a bit more, however, making the Pentium D 830 a roughly equal price. If you look at the single core foundation of the parts rather than the model number, though, you get some interesting details. A single 2.0GHz 512K AMD core is called the 3200+, making it roughly the equal of the Pentium 4 540 3.2GHz. Two of these cores comprise the X2 3800+, while two 3.2GHz Prescott cores make the Pentium D 840. The 840 actually retails for substantially more than the X2 3800+, so comparing the 3800+ and the 820 is hardly fair. While there are a few applications where the Pentium D wins out in raw performance, the X2 3800+ is definitely the faster chip overall, and it runs cooler as well.

Raw performance isn't really that important for most home users, though. If you'll pardon my anecdote for a minute, I frequently use a Pentium III 1.13GHz with 512MB of RAM, and Word and Excel have no trouble keeping up with my typing speed. Web page rendering on such an old system can be quite a bit slower, but the point is that the majority of what an office computer will do is to sit around waiting for user input. We're not going to list alternatives here, as we really don't feel that anything more expensive is worth considering. You could probably stick with the 3000+ chip and be fine, but the second core is nice to have if/when you need it. You can also overclock the 3800+ quite a bit, with 2.4GHz being a relatively easy mark. That would give you a 4600+ equivalent, and very few home systems can come anywhere near that level of performance, dual core or otherwise.

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Intel Office Motherboard: ASUS 945P P5LD2
Price: $132 shipped
Intel Office CPU: Pentium D 820 2x1MB 2.8GHz
Price: $248 shipped (Retail)
Total: $380

Our Intel office choices are similar in some ways to the gaming choices. We once again selected an ASUS motherboard, this time using the 945P chipset. You could get any of the Intel 945P or Intel 945G based motherboards and be reasonably safe in terms of stability, but we do like the added features that ASUS provides, and a quality motherboard is arguably the most important component when it comes to system reliability.

For the processor, we went with the cheapest Intel dual core part. As we mentioned above, this is not at all a fair match in terms of performance, as the AMD chip will easily beat the 820 in pretty much every benchmark. However, given the choice between the Pentium 650 and the 820 for office work, we'd take the 820. If you're looking at the $380 price of this configuration and comparing it with the $459 of the X2 setup, that's a decent savings. We won't actually "save" that money, however, but instead we'll use it to upgrade other aspects of the system.

Alternatives are plentiful for the motherboard. If you just want stock performance, the ECS 945P 945P-A and Biostar I945P-A7 come in at under $100. (We'd guess that ECS actually makes the board for Biostar, although we could be wrong.) Both of those have a second physical X16 slot, but it's only an X1 or perhaps X2 data connection. It can't be used for SLI or for Crossfire at present, but driver updates in the future could very well change that. On the processor side, you could upgrade to the 830 for another $65, coming close to the same cost as the X2 configuration. The extra 200MHz really isn't worth the cost in our opinion, and as we said, we have other plans for the money....



Memory Recommendations

RAM prices have mostly stabilized after some major price cuts several months ago. In fact, on the DDR side, we're actually starting to see the budget parts increase in price. Whether this is due to manufacturing shifting to DDR2 production or other influences is difficult to say. It is now cheaper to get 2x512MB of DDR2 PC-4200 than it is to get 2x512MB of DDR PC-3200. For a good mid-range setup, 2x512MB minimum is absolutely required. There's no point in purchasing DIMMs that are smaller than 512MB in size, especially with some applications beginning to use even more than 1GB of RAM. RAM requirements are only going to increase in the future, and 512MB DIMMs will at least get you up to 2GB total memory when - not if - the need arises. (Of course, you might have a new system by the time 2GB becomes necessary, but that's a debate for another day.)

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Office DDR Recommendation: Corsair Value Select CL2.5 2x512MB
Price: $83 shipped (Retail)

You can check out our prices for 2x512MB of PC3200 DDR at our Pricing Engine. Any of the brands listed there are safe bets, though we've chosen Corsair CL2.5 RAM for our recommendation. (That was the cheapest CL2.5 RAM listed at the time of writing; a couple of other options are available with CL3.0 that cost a bit less, but that's cutting corners a bit too much.) This RAM runs with 2.5-3-3-8 timings, with the command rate working at 1T or 2T depending on the motherboard and other factors. The difference in performance between this budget RAM and what we're listing in our gaming setup is going to be negligible for office work. More importantly, we spent so much money on the X2 processor that we're balancing that expenditure by adjusting other selections.

If you want a bit more performance, or if you're interested in overclocking - though we'd caution against doing such on a "serious work" PC - upgrading to the RAM in our gaming setup is an option. For real multitasking use and professional applications, we'd recommend upgrading to a 2x1024MB RAM configuration instead. For value RAM, that starts at around $200 and goes up. You can get a list of several options from our Price Engine. In my own experience, the Patriot Extreme Performance works very well at the rated 2-3-2-5 1T timings, and on appropriate motherboards, I've managed to run it as high as DDR450 with 2.5-3-3-8 1T timings.

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Gaming DDR Recommendation: Patriot PC-3200 2x512MB Extreme Performance XBL
Price: $150 shipped (Retail)

For the Gaming DDR setup, we're grabbing the lowest priced DIMMs that use Samsung TCCD chips. In this case, it's the Patriot/PDP XBL RAM. There are other models that offer up to DDR533 speeds, but only with 3-4-4-8 latency. We like the RAM that can do 2-2-2-5-1T at DDR400, as it tends to be more flexible. I've personally used the Patriot XBL and OCZ Platinum Rev. 2, and for all intents and purposes, they perform the same. DDR560 with 2.85V ran stable at 2.5-3-3-8 1T timings, which allows for at least 2.52GHz from the Venice chip when overclocked. (Note that the choice of motherboard and chipset did have an impact on how fast the RAM would run, so you may or may not reach the same exact timings.)

Quite a few DIMMs with Winbond BH5 or CH5 are also available; for example, the OCZ VX and Mushkin Redline. Users who aren't afraid of pushing RAM voltages to 3.2V and above might prefer the lower latency at higher speeds offered by such RAM. We'd recommend that you add some active cooling (in other words, a fan) to the RAM if you're using 3.2V or higher, as it will start to generate quite a bit of heat. With a 3000+ chip and the maximum 9X multiplier, you'll probably end up using the DDR333 memory speed for overclocking if you use Winbond DIMMs. That's not terribly important, but it's worth noting that CH5 isn't likely to get reach the DDR578 speed that would be required to run 1:1 ratio with a 2.60GHz CPU.

$150 for 2x512MB of RAM isn't a terrible price, for high quality RAM. As we mentioned with the office setup, adding more RAM is a viable alternative. The 2x1024MB Patriot RAM mentioned earlier runs $230, or you could get the OCZ EL Platinum for $259 (with $25 MIR).

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Office DDR2 Recommendation: Corsair PC-4200 2x1024MB Value
Price: $163 shipped (Retail)

We've hinted that we had some plans for the dual core Pentium D, and here you can see the result. Since the processor is cheaper than the X2 (even considering motherboard costs), we had a bit of wiggle room. 2x512MB of RAM is sufficient for most people, so you can always go with that configuration if you desire. However, $163 for two 1024MB DIMMs that are still capable of 4-4-4 timings at DDR2-533 is too much to pass up. That's one of the benefits of DDR2: higher densities while still providing a lot of bandwidth. You can find DDR memory rated for PC-4000 at 3-2-2 timings, but the RAM will cost about twice as much as this DDR2.

Who really needs 2GB of RAM, though? A lot of the stuff that we talk about in regards to dual core systems - multitasking many applications, running several CPU intensive tasks at the same time, gaming while doing other work - can benefit from having more than 1GB of RAM. The only real problem is that Windows, by default, does some odd things with memory management. If you had 1500MB of programs and data loaded into RAM on a 2GB system, ideally you would never move any data to the page file, right? Unfortunately, Windows doesn't behave "ideally" and you might actually consider reducing the page file maximum size if you're sure you don't need more virtual memory. Benchmarks don't necessarily help in showing most of the benefits, but informal testing shows that exiting many games after they've been running for a long time is substantially faster with 2GB - near instantaneous rather than pausing for 30 seconds or more!

If you ever want to break the 32-bit memory barrier, you'll also need 1GB DIMMs, so this is a step in that direction. 8x512MB could get you to 4GB, but no desktop motherboards at present have 8 DIMM slots. You need to move up to workstation class for that, and dual sockets and CPUs as well. When will we actually need more than 2GB of RAM? Hopefully, not for several years for most people, but it's as inevitable as the shifts from 64MB to 128MB, 128MB to 256MB, etc., which have already occurred.

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Gaming DDR2 Recommendation: Corsair PC-5400 2x512MB XMS2 C4
Price: $137 shipped (Retail)

We assume that those looking at the Gaming DDR2 setup are going to at least consider overclocking, so we've moved from DDR2-533 to DDR2-667. If you drop back to a 1:1 ratio (rather than the 3:4 of DDR2-533), you could actually use the same RAM as the Office setup and move to 2GB instead, while still reaching at least 3.73GHz - assuming that the processor will handle that speed. We'd probably go that approach ourselves, so consider this more of a higher bandwidth alternative than an outright Gaming recommendation. Not many games currently use more than 1GB of RAM, but Battlefield 2 and FEAR (judging by the demo) are both breaking the 1GB barrier.

We've selected Corsair XMS2 C4 RAM for this option, which means you still get the lower CAS 4 Latency - most PC-5400 DDR2 runs at 5-5-5 latency rather than 4-4-4. Using the forced 14X CPU multiplier that's available on all the currently shipping 800FSB Pentium 4 chips (520 and above or 630 and above), you could run 1:1 ratio at up to 4.67 GHZ - basically, more than you can actually reach in practice without resorting to extreme cooling. Even going with the 3:4 ratio more commonly used (DDR2-533), you could still reach a 1000MHz FSB - 250MHz base bus speed. That would result in a 3500MHz CPU at the 14X multiplier, or 3750MHz using the standard 15X multiplier of the Pentium 630 chips.

Disclaimer: We've talked a lot about overclocking on this page. No, you don't need to do it, and no, the results suggested above are not guaranteed. The saying generally goes that if you need to ask how to overclock, you shouldn't do it.



Graphics Recommendations

All of the motherboards are obviously PCI Express systems, so we only need two graphics options. For the Gaming system, we recommend that you spend as much money as possible on a graphics card. SLI is always there for future upgrades, but we'd start with a single, fast GPU rather than purchasing two moderately fast GPUs and running them in SLI. Here are our two choices for graphics.

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Office Graphics Recommendation: Connect3D Radeon X700 Pro 128MB
Price: $98 shipped (Retail)

While there are cheaper graphics cards for PCI Express, none of them are particularly fast. You can save about $50 by dropping to a GeForce 6200TC or X300SE HyperMemory if you really want. We prefer to get something with a bit more performance, ensuring not only the ability to play games now and then, but also giving better hardware 3D acceleration for Windows Vista when that comes out. The X700 Pro fits those requirements by roughly doubling the performance of the 6200TC and X300SE cards. What that gives us is a PC that's capable of handling any task at least acceptably and some tasks exceptionally.

For a bit more money, there are quite a few upgrade options. X800 128MB, 6600GT, 6800, X800GT/GTO, X800Pro, X800XL... the list goes on. If you don't feel that the X700 Pro will meet your needs, we'd probably upgrade to at least the X800XL/Pro or 6800GT. Those are all roughly twice as fast, and they're about twice as much - more in the case of the 6800GT. Once you near the $300 price range, though, you should probably just jump to our gaming recommendation.

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Gaming Graphics Recommendation: XFX 7800 GT Overclocked
Price: $379 shipped (Retail)

For the Gaming configurations, the idea is quite simple: save on the CPU costs and some other areas in order to get the fastest graphics card possible, within our budget. The key there is staying within budget, which means that we're not actually getting the fastest GPU, as that would be the 7800GTX. You could even drop the GPU to a 6800GT if you want to save some money, but the 7800GT is substantially faster and we feel that it's worth the upgrade. Like the 7800GTX cards, almost all currently available 7800GT cards are based of the NVIDIA reference design, with a few minor tweaks. The XFX card comes factory overclocked and costs less than most other 7800GT cards at present, so it gets our recommendation. However, it is possible that some of the other 7800GT cards are quieter than the XFX, so if you have information to that effect, spending another $10 to $15 would be advisable. On the other hand, louder and cooler might be a better choice for longevity.

As you can see in our 7800GT Preview, the card performs quite well. The XFX OC is even slightly faster, which you can see in our XFX 7800GT OC Review. Since it's faster than the 6800 Ultra in virtually every test, there's no reason to get a 6800 Ultra anymore. Another piece of good news is that when the 7800GT becomes too slow for your needs - as it inevitably will - you can always add a second card and get a substantial performance boost. That's assuming, of course, that the 7800GT remains on the market long enough for you to upgrade; we hope that it will, but two years from now we may find it discontinued for one reason or another.

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AMD Gaming Platform Alternative: EVGA 7800 GT or 7800 GTX with free EVGA SLI motherboard
Price: $449 or $549 shipped (Retail)

The reason why we list this as an alternative is because it's a limited time offer. EVGA has finished their direct sales offer, but you can still get the same deal from Newegg and ZipZoomFly. How long it will be available is anyone's guess. The deal is quite simple: buy an EVGA 7800 GT or GTX card and you get the EVGA motherboard for free. The EVGA board is just a rebranded version of the Jetway 939GT4-SLI that we recently reviewed, and performance and features are very good. Jetway isn't known for producing high performance, enthusiast class motherboards, but this particular board exceeded all our expectations.

Is the EVGA/Jetway board better than the DFI SLI-D? Perhaps not, but it's close enough that the savings offered make it worth its consideration. When compared to the DFI and XFX configuration that we're recommending, you can get the EVGA bundle for about $100 less, or alternatively, you can get the EVGA 7800GTX instead of the XFX 7800GT. Either option is a good deal, relatively speaking, so if you're in the market to upgrade right now, you might want to act quickly. The EVGA promotional page has more details and links to participating resellers if you're interested.



Remaining Recommendations

We've covered the major components of the systems, and all that remains are the accessories. There isn't much new to say on the majority of these parts, and our Price Guides cover each area in more detail. Here are the rest of the components, and for most of them personal preference will play a large part in determining what you get. If you want higher quality speakers, you'll need to spend more money. A faster hard drive (or multiple hard drives) is definitely an option, but for most people it won't have a major impact - we generally prefer storage capacity and low noise levels over a small increase in HDD performance. Case, power supply, and optical storage choices round out the final components.

We have two lists of the remaining parts, one for the gaming configurations and the other for the office setups. We tried to balance the final system cost as much as possible, but the simple truth is that a good gaming/enthusiast setup requires more expensive parts than a business configuration. You can always downgrade some of the components to cheaper alternatives, but if we were building a computer for our own use, we'd rather save up for better quality than settle for lower cost.

Click images to enlarge.

Gaming Components:

Hard Drive:	Western Digital SATA II 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE	$81
Optical Drive:	BenQ DW1640 Black (OEM)	$43
Case:	Cooler Master Cavalier 3 CAV-T03-UK	$76
Power Supply:	SunBeam 550W NUUO SUNNU550-US-BK Modular PSU	$86
Speakers:	Labtec ARENA 685 5.1 Speakers	$48
Keyboard and Mouse:	Logitech Internet Pro Desktop	$23

Click images to enlarge.

Office Components:

Hard Drive:	Hitachi SATA 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Deskstar 7K250 NCQ	$120
Optical Drive:	NEC 3540A Black (OEM)	$42
Case and Power Supply:	Antec Sonata II + SmartPower 2.0 450W PSU	$115
Speakers:	Logitech Z-3e 2.1 Speakers	$73
Keyboard and Mouse:	Logitech Internet Pro Desktop	$23

Most of the choices should be pretty self-explanatory, so we just want to touch on the important areas. First, we've chosen to use a higher end power supply for the gaming configuration. Many people think that the modular power supplies are nice as they help to eliminate cable clutter, though some of the cables are a little stiff and can be difficult to route. The SunBeam 550W that we've chosen includes two PCIe power connectors, which would be required for an SLI configuration. (If you're running high-end components in an SLI setup, we'd think twice about using simple molex-to-PCIe adapters.) $86 for a power supply is a lot of money, but that's better than having random system crashes caused by exceeding the PSU load levels. Antec, OCZ, Enermax, and a few others also have some SLI-ready power supplies, though most cost upwards of $100 (and we'd avoid anything claiming SLI readiness that costs under $75).

Both setups use pretty low-end speaker arrangements. The Z-3e speakers sound good for the price, but they're not at the level of something like the Z-5500 or Klipsch, and true audiophiles would scoff at either of those "high end" choices that we just mentioned. If you're serious about audio quality, you probably already know more than what we typically cover in the Buyer's Guides. (The entire Logitech line of speakers is pretty reasonable if you're looking for other options. We've recommended them many times in the past, and this isn't really a change in recommendation so much as an alternative that you might consider.) We also stick with the integrated audio solutions for all of the systems, though the Karajan adapter of the DFI board certainly offers the best overall quality of the four boards. While there is a difference between integrated audio and discrete audio solutions, you'll need better speakers before it really begins to matter.

Our hard drive and optical drive selections are essentially a toss up. Our last Hard Drive Roundup showed that SATA 3.0Gbps drives were faster in some areas, NCQ could help out in certain tests as well, but there was no clear victor. All things being equal, we'll go for cost per GB, and for the dual-core systems, we'll also grab an NCQ enabled drive. Some people would rather have a better warranty like the 5-year Seagate and Western Digital Raptor or Caviar RE. If you ever need to use that warranty, though, you'll probably be pretty unhappy - the data on the drive is almost always more important than the drive itself. That's why a good backup strategy is important, and the DVDR drives that we've listed will get you started. We should also mention that firmware updates to the NEC 3540A and BenQ DW1640 drives have ironed out most of the media compatibility issues, so either drive is a good purchase.



Display Recommendations

The final area that we want to discuss is the display choice. We've abandoned CRTs, as innovation has pretty much ceased, and the quality is getting worse relative to three years ago. LCDs are attractive, lightweight, space saving, and supposedly easier on the eyes over extended use. If you already have a good CRT, it might be worth keeping, and there are still some older model 21/22" CRTs that are worth buying, but we won't recommend any specific model here as supplies are limited. If you're looking for a large CRT, try to find one that has a 140 kHz horizontal scan rate or higher - that will allow 85Hz refresh rate at 2048x1536. Now, let's get to our LCD recommendation.

Click to enlarge.

Base LCD Recommendation: Acer AL1914smd-8 19 inch 8ms LCD
Price: $301 shipped (Retail)

The Acer AL1914smd is an 8ms response time LCD that performs very well in games and other uses. (At least it does to my less than stellar eyesight.) There are other LCDs that perform similarly or better, but they cost more. We've recommended the Acer display in previous Guides, and we have not yet found an LCD that can beat it on price/performance. The 6-bit color panel isn't the best, but most people won't notice the dithering that takes place. In addition, few people will experience problems with motion blur given the low response times. Of course, 8ms displays are no longer that special.

If you're willing to spend the money, you can now get sub-8ms response times - assuming that the marketing department is telling the truth. Viewsonic and several others are advertising 6ms and lower response times - Viewsonic even claims 3ms gray-to-gray response times on their VX924 19" unit. Some people are not bothered by motion blur even on 16ms LCDs, but others may notice it and may find it distracting. If you are irritated by motion blur with LCDs (try a few out in person), the 3ms GTG Viewsonic should remedy that problem. We must admit that with a refresh rate of 60 or 75 Hz for all the LCDs that we've used, we're a little curious to know how a 6ms response time can be measured, but hopefully, the worst case color transitions will still be under 12ms. However, getting a 19" LCD may not be the best idea - for gaming or business use.

Our advice is to get the absolute best display that you can afford and stick with it for a long time. I used a 21" CRT for 8 years (through at least as many computers), so quality vs. time is definitely in favor of buying a high-end display. My own upgrade just recently was to a Dell 2405FPW, and it's great - hopefully it will last at least five years, if not more. You don't need to go out and spend $900 or more on a display, but many people do just that. If you stick with the base 19" LCD recommendation, you'll be CPU/platform limited in the majority of games with a 7800 GT. For professional work, the native 1280x1024 resolution can also be limiting, although you can always go with dual LCDs if you need more screen real estate. We would strongly urge enthusiasts and power users to at least look at the 20" or larger range.

Click to enlarge.

Upgraded LCD Recommendation: Dell 2005FPW
Price: Varies; look for under $500 sales

The Dell 2005FPW and 2001FP are a couple of great choices if you can grab one on sale for $500 or less. (Sales happen frequently on these parts, but they also sell out fast.) The 2005FPW is widescreen with a 1680x1050 native resolution, while the 2001FP is a standard 1600x1200 display. We'd go for the 2001FP, but it frequently costs $75 to $125 more than the 2005FPW, so it may not be worth the premium.

HP has similar sales on their LCDs, though they're usually still more expensive than Dell. Truly high-end users might even consider picking up something like the Apple 30" Cinema Display, though you'll need a card with a dual-link DVI connection for that. 7800 GT/GTX cards have one dual-link, as do several of the Quadro cards. Do some research before going this route. Long story short (too late!), it's basically very difficult to overspend when buying a quality display. It's one of the few components that can last half a decade or more without upgrades.

Just to reiterate, the Acer display that we've chosen to recommend is a good-not-great LCD. Upgrade to something better if you can spare the money and you won't be disappointed. Widescreen LCDs can be really nice as well, but getting games to work can prove frustrating. We suggest that you take a look at websites like the Widescreen Gaming Forum to make sure that the games you play are fully supported before going that route. We'd like to think that all future games will offer native support for WS resolutions, but Battlefield 2 has shown that even high profile games may not include proper support.



System Summaries

That takes care of the recommendations for four different systems. We've included AMD and Intel variants for both platforms, though we have to say that we prefer two of the choices over the others. The Intel Gaming solution is really not the best fit for that market, while the Pentium D with 2GB of RAM really provides a lot of value for the Office and Professional market. (Yes, the AMD X2 is also very good in that market, though it does cost more.)

Gaming Systems

AMD Mid-Range Gaming System
Hardware	Component	Price
Processor	Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 512K 1.80GHz (939) - Retail	146
Motherboard	DFI LanParty UT SLI-DR	165
Memory	Patriot PC-3200 2x512MB Extreme Performance XBL	150
Video Card	XFX 7800 GT Overclocked	379
Hard Drive	Western Digital SATA II 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE	81
Optical Drive	BenQ DW1640 Black (OEM)	43
Case	Cooler Master Cavalier 3 CAV-T03-UK	76
Power Supply	SunBeam 550W NUUO SUNNU550-US-BK Modular PSU	86
Display	Acer AL1914smd-8 19 inch 8ms LCD	301
Speakers	Labtec ARENA 685 5.1 Speakers	48
Keyboard and Mouse	Logitech Internet Pro Desktop	23
Bottom Line		1498

Intel Mid-Range Gaming System
Hardware	Component	Price
Processor	Pentium 630 2MB 3.0GHz (775) - Retail	175
Motherboard	ASUS P5ND2-SLI Deluxe	199
Memory	Corsair PC-5300 2x512MB XMS2 C4	137
Video Card	XFX 7800 GT Overclocked	379
Hard Drive	Western Digital SATA II 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE	81
Optical Drive	BenQ DW1640 Black (OEM)	43
Case	Cooler Master Cavalier 3 CAV-T03-UK	76
Power Supply	SunBeam 550W NUUO SUNNU550-US-BK Modular PSU	86
Display	Acer AL1914smd-8 19 inch 8ms LCD	301
Speakers	Labtec ARENA 685 5.1 Speakers	48
Keyboard and Mouse	Logitech Internet Pro Desktop	23
Bottom Line		1548

$1500+ for a "gaming system" seems like an awful lot of money, doesn't it? The $400 price of the upcoming Xbox 360 looks like a bargain by comparison! However, consider this for a moment: you don't need a display for the Xbox 360, as you use your TV - or alternatively, add the cost of a TV to the console. Furthermore, you can't do most business work on a console. Email, word processing, spreadsheets, surfing the Internet - some of those might be possible to a limited degree, but consoles certainly won't match the overall utility of a personal computer. If you're like many people, you already need a computer in your home. For gaming, you're pretty much just adding a $400 graphics card (and even a $200 graphics card would suffice).

If you can use your current monitor, speakers, keyboard, and mouse, and if you go with the EVGA bundle, you could get the price of a fully capable gaming system down to just over $1000, shipped. You could also go the other direction and buy 2x1GB of RAM, a faster CPU, a big LCD, and more HDD capacity (or multiple drives), resulting in a truly High-End system costing over $2000. Neither option is "correct", so spend what you want to spend and use this Buyer's Guide as exactly that: a guide on what you might want to purchase.

If you want other options on how to balance the Gaming performance against cost, drop the SLI support and get the Office motherboard selection, and drop to an Antec Sonata-II instead of the separate case and PSU. You save $114 on the either configuration. You can go with a cheaper graphics card as well - $230 for the X800XL, and you're right at the $1250 price point. Personally, though, we'd rather spend the extra money for the 7800GT.

Office Systems

AMD Mid-Range System
Hardware	Component	Price
Processor	Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2x512K 2.0GHz (939) - Retail	361
Motherboard	EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra	98
Memory	Corsair PC-3200 2x512MB Value CL2.5	89
Video Card	Connect3D Radeon X700 Pro 128MB	98
Hard Drive	Hitachi SATA 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Deskstar T7K250 NCQ	120
Optical Drive	NEC 3540A Black (OEM)	42
Case and Power Supply	Antec Sonata II + SmartPower 2.0 450W PSU	115
Display	Acer AL1914smd-8 19 inch 8ms LCD	301
Speakers	Logitech Z-3e 2.1 Speakers	73
Keyboard and Mouse	Logitech Internet Pro Desktop	23
Bottom Line		1320

Intel Mid-Range System
Hardware	Component	Price
Processor	Pentium D 820 2x1MB 2.8GHz (775) - Retail	248
Motherboard	ASUS 945P P5LD2	132
Memory	Corsair PC-4200 2x1024MB Value	163
Video Card	Connect3D Radeon X700 Pro 128MB	98
Hard Drive	Hitachi SATA 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Deskstar T7K250 NCQ	120
Optical Drive	NEC 3540A Black (OEM)	42
Case and Power Supply	Antec Sonata II + SmartPower 2.0 450W PSU	115
Display	Acer AL1914smd-8 19 inch 8ms LCD	301
Speakers	Logitech Z-3e 2.1 Speakers	73
Keyboard and Mouse	Logitech Internet Pro Desktop	23
Bottom Line		1315

Our Office configurations are a little less painful on the old pocketbook, ringing up at just over $1300. As with the Gaming setups, reusing your current display, speakers, etc. could reduce the cost quite a bit, getting under the $1000 price point. For the AMD setup, you might consider upgrading to 2x1GB of RAM, since multitasking that can take advantage of two cores is also more likely to surpass the 1GB RAM usage mark. The Intel system comes with 2GB of RAM, but the processor is definitely slower than the X2 3800+. It might be worth considering a CPU upgrade for the Intel system, but we're not really sold on the bang for the buck that it offers.

Some of you are probably wondering how the dual core CPUs perform in gaming systems. Many games work fine, though some have issues with two cores being present. (There aren't any current games that can actually utilize both cores, unfortunately.) Anand has mentioned recently that he's looking into gaming compatibility. We do have a modified version of the setaffin.exe Freeware program that might prove useful - unlike setaffin.exe and runfirst.exe, you can set the application to run on any CPU core instead of just CPU 0. If you'd like, give it a try - it's unsupported software, and we take no responsibility for what it might do to your system, of course. It's also available under the GPL license free of charge. (Thanks to Russell Pickett for providing the basis of the tool; simple, yet effective! We've avoided providing a direct link to his web page to avoid overloading his home server.)

Conclusion

We hope that you've found this Buyer's Guide to be useful, and we'll be releasing additional Guides more frequently in the future. Your comments, suggestions, and criticisms are welcome. As we've tried to make clear, there is no perfect system that we can recommend for every person. If you're willing to spend $1250 or so, however, there are plenty of decisions that can be made to tune the system to your needs.

We did not include an OS in the total cost of any system, so that would add $90 to $135 (when purchased with hardware) to the price for Windows XP. We should also mention that there has been some confusion about XP Home and dual-core support. XP SP2 will indeed support both cores; it is licensed as a single socket product, so it supports HyperThreading as well as the Pentium D and X2 processors. Even though it will work, we prefer the added flexibility of XP Professional and feel that it is worth the extra $45.

You could also ditch Microsoft altogether and go with Linux or some other Unix derivative - probably not for gaming, but OpenOffice with Linux actually makes for a rather potent office system. We wouldn't give such a setup to your grandparents, but more knowledgeable computer users shouldn't have too much trouble figuring out how to get such a system working properly.